War hits home for high school coach

Columnist Charita Goshay talks about war, the missing pregnant woman in Ohio and Adam "Pacman" Jones, an NFL player questioned outside a strip club in Atlanta.

Charita Goshay

Of all the words uttered by the so-called experts regarding Iraq, none has
been more accurate and eloquent than those recently spoken by Fairless High
School boys basketball coach at Matt Kramer:

“You study wars in books, and you don’t get the personal side because
fatalities become statistics. But it hits home that these are real people
when somebody calls you on a Sunday afternoon and tells you one of your
former players died in Iraq.”

Once you can connect a combat death with a face, a name, a hometown, it
forever shatters the illusion of distance and comfort that sterile
statistics can offer.

When a soldier’s homecoming is by virtue of a flag-draped coffin, it does
not occur in a vacuum. In every case, a broken-hearted family, a friend, a
community awaits his or her arrival. Someone is always left to figure out
how best to navigate the rest of their lives around the enormous hole that a
death creates.

Ohio has given more than her fair share of sons to Iraq. Just since Memorial
Day, six have died, the latest among them Army Spec. Zachary A. Grass, 22,
of Sugar Creek Township, who played for Matt Kramer.

With predictions by some military experts that we could be in Iraq for 10
years, expect Ohio’s list -- and the sorrow, to grow.

MEDIA MADNESS

The mystery of what may have happened to Jessie Marie Davis of Lake Township
has all the ingredients of the kind of story that whips the national media
into a frenzy: Sex, race, a pregnancy, a philandering cop, a talkative
toddler and frantic family members and friends. Already, CNN, Fox, People
magazine, and other outlets have found their way to what is normally
regarded as “flyover” country.

There always has been a natural tension between law enforcement and the
media. Police feel the need to preserve and protect information during their
investigations, and reporters feel an obligation to inform the public. But
the electronic hordes descending upon this community as a result of Davis’
disappearance will make our daily phone calls to the cop house seem like the
good old days. Here’s hoping the ensuing hoopla will help locate Jessie
Davis.

MOB MENTALITY

Why do so many of the rich and famous like to surround themselves with
sycophants, when it almost always leads to trouble? Take for example,
trouble-magnet Adam “Pacman” Jones, an NFL player who’s being questioned by
police once again after a recent shooting outside of a -- surprise --
strip club in Atlanta, following a fight over a ‹ guess who? ‹ woman,
involving members of his ‹ go ahead, guess ‹ entourage.

Though Jones wasn’t present at the incident, just the fact that his
entourage was involved catapults it beyond mere police blotter. Jones, who
has been arrested five times and suspended for 10 games this coming season,
seems to have an insatiable penchant for trouble. In February, he was
questioned about a shooting in Las Vegas that occurred shortly after he
tossed $81,000 into the air at a strip joint, then went ballistic when the
“shoe models” started grabbing the money. In the predictable melee, three
employees were shot, one permanently paralyzed.

How could a person be intelligent enough to read an NFL playbook, yet can’t
decipher the handwriting on the wall?